Cosmic Evolution-The Growth of Culture-Sea-Serpents It is a striking circumstance in these days, when it is easy to feel that the world is too much with us,' and often the selfishness of materialism seems to be winning all along the line, that the leading men of science, biologists especially, should declare themselves to be more and more convinced that beyond the regions of their searchings and partial findings is a surety of the great First Cause, which is God, the highest level of the Cosmos.' Dr J. E. Boodin, the Professor of Philosophy at the Carleton College in Minnesota, and known to many British thinkers for his bold and imaginative suggestions, emphasises this newly-born old truth, in his work on 'Cosmic Evolution' (Macmillan). 'Nothing happens by chance, and it is not by chance that organisms have developed eyes, ears, and other sense organs.' With such an assertion, backed by a sufficient detail and convincing weight of argument, he shows how the theory of Evolution, the chapter of truth through which Darwin cleared the stage for a further march of thought, is found wanting. In the same way he demonstrates that the influence of Einstein, which only the day before yesterday had modified the principles set down by Newton, is recognised already as merely an imperfect step forward in the progress of realised truth. Euclidean exactitudes are thrown out of date through the theories of Relativity, and the necessity of taking account of time as well as of space among the dimensions of reality; so the present findings of Herr Einstein must be modified as investigation gathers more precise estimates of the relative position and values of the facts of universal existence. This fascinating work touches infinite problems and stimulates thought in many directions; but its outstanding assertion, and the most helpful, is its frank recognition of God as the Cosmic Genius whose laws are the governing factors of life and systems, If dispersed and yet coherent, through universality. This truth implies an absolute re-shaping of religious conceptions; and so, at once, there is another vastness to be overhauled! A hopeful book, with all its relegation of humanity to its due significance in the vastness of the universe; a work informative and strengthening; and of a depth and compactness of thought which is no less reliable because, under the impulse of the greatness of his theme, Dr Boodin's pen is often touched with the inspiration of poetry. Dr Abinas Chandra Das, the lecturer on Ancient Indian History at the University of Calcutta, has supplemented a challenging volume on Rig Vedic India with a work of authority on 'Rig Vedic Culture' (Cambray, Calcutta). It is possible that its earlier pages, in which he insists upon the extraordinary age of that culture, placing its beginning so far back as 25,000 years B.C.; when, as he alleges, a race of Neolithic Aryan nomads peopled northern India, and a great inland sea covered most of the present province of Rajputana, may handicap its acceptance with some; for, obviously, that is a bold assertion which can only be supported with conjectural evidence; but, leaving aside that debateable detail, the work illustrates vividly, through apt reference to and quotations from the Rig Veda, the development of civilisation in India. Dr Das, in this purpose, is as pleasantly suggestive and reasonable as could be wished; though naturally in a work of such very wide scope, which suffers the inevitable disability of having but a poor foundation of dates, there must be points for criticism. For instance, he refers to the horse as figuring much in 'ancient Aryan society,' a 'noble and splendid animal, possessing great speed, indomitable energy and dashing vigour'; but, despite his assertion of chariotriding and racing, do not biologists assure us that in those early times the horse was a creature with toes, and something of the size of the modern Newfoundland dog? It would, however, be unjust to dwell upon details in a work of such width and courage; for, judged as a whole, it is wise and exhaustive. The author demonstrates how gradually, under the inspiration of the Sage-priests, who led the van of progress in the early and subsequent stages of Aryan development, ersal rep cattle were domesticated, the use of fire was discovered, the plough and the wagon were invented, the arts of agriculture learnt and taught; and, passing to less practical considerations, how the dawn of the idea of divinity broke through the darkness. Fire-worship was instituted, the bases of marriage were established, and the one supreme Deity, the primordial source of creation,' was gradually realised. Indeed, civilisation, in its essential aspects, practical and spiritual, was discovered, evolved and established in India thousands of years before our ancestors of these islands had escaped from their conditions of prowling savagery. One principle seems to have been settled in that culture which, had it not been tampered with, would have preserved the stamina of the Indian peoples. Child-marriage was not then practised. It is to child-marriage that much of the physical and moral deterioration of our Indian brothers and sisters is due. Brief as is his book, and infinite as is the subject it treats, 'Animal Life in the Sea' (Hodder), the author, Mr R. J. Daniel, of the University of Liverpool, has managed to include in it not only a number of instructive facts, but something of that rarity in books of science-humour. Beginning with the life of the shallows, he passes on to the great deeps of mystery, to the large fish, to the whales; and so to extinct marine monsters, and that old summer companion of the giant gooseberry, the sea-serpent. Although he suggests that this creature, which has haunted for centuries the imagination of travellers, may be merely a giant squid, it is something that he does not disestablish it altogether. The regions of the ocean are so vast, and so little of their depth has been plumbed, that monsters may still exist undetected by the ship-men-so why not the seaserpent? Mr Bertrand Russell's 'On Education' (Allen & Unwin) does not prove as soul-searching and revolutionary as might have been expected from the lay archbishop of the modern Intelligentsia, and the end of the book leaves us much where educationists had taken us. He is lucid and, of course, generally sensible, because most of his thoughts are those which all of us are thinking, but the pale bee of Pacificism flies frequently about his bonnet and leads him to pen such an absurdity as that during the war, we caused almost all German children to suffer from rickets,' a statement so partial and extreme that it casts doubt on the reasonableness of the writer, and suggests a wonder whether such a spirit as that is really helpful when expressed upon education or anything else. Mr Russell is able to begin easily by harking back to the rod and rote methods of seventy years ago, when even so humane and enlightened a schoolmaster as Dr Arnold could recommend flogging for 'moral evil'in children, including under that tremendous generalisation 'habitual idleness,' which Mr Russell suggests was probably due to adenoids. He is, of course, absolutely right in pointing out the enormous waste of effort and opportunity in the educational systems of to-day-young brains often being stored with loads of mere lumber-and none will dispute the truth that the aims of teachers should be primarily to develop in their pupils vitality, courage, sensitiveness, and intelligence, because upon those qualities depends the excellent citizen; but somehow we looked for more from its writer than this book has given us. The English Men of Letters' series (Macmillan) under John Morley won and deserved such widespread fame, generally through the greatness of its contributors— Trollope, Huxley, Canon Ainger, Dean Church, Prof. Dowden, and Sir Alfred Lyall being amongst them—that the choice of Mr J. C. Squire as editor of the new series aroused some measure of polite doubt. Mr Squire is a poet and literary journalist of distinction and charm; but his selection of colleagues has sometimes caused disquiet. Three volumes of the new series have now appeared, and, despite the conscientiousness and goodwill of their writers, the misgiving is not removed. The first of these volumes is devoted to 'Swinburne.' Mr Harold Nicolson has done his work carefully, and has estimated the man and poet justly; but he has not repeated the success of his books on Tennyson and Byron, or helped to the better knowledge of Swinburne. His judgments are ordinary, the commonplace of the everyday reader. To some degree he reflects the Lytton Strachey manner of genial acid analysis; and on this occasion has reserved that process for the belated entry sed of Theodore Watts-Dunton, the literary lawyer who saved Swinburne's life and deadened his personality. Mr Nicolson does justice to the episode of No. 2, the Pines'; and how brilliant, possibly, would this have been if Mr Max Beerbohm had not preceded him in that pathetic, amusing, biographical chapter! It was right for him to emphasise the subduing influence of Watts-Dunton, because without that sombre intrusion Swinburne in his last thirty years would not have unwritten himself so deplorably. The poet was dimmed and extinguished through a peddling fussiness; the outpoured volumes in verse and prose of these later years went far to obscure the passion and true poetry of his flaming youth. Mr Nicolson has anyhow written a sane and honest book; and so has Mr John Freeman, with 'Herman Melville'; though it is, indeed, open to question whether a ‘classical, architectural writer,' such as he, was appropriate to the subject; for Melville was an adventurer of strong personality, luminous, vehement, rugged, touched at times to a power and scope almost Shakespearean, whereas Mr Freeman, with his quiet scholarly devotion and conscience, his almost pernickety weighings and measurings of Melville's literary qualities, and his clear-cut, frigid style, seems determined never to take the hazards of a flight. Possibly, in one respect, he is the most fortunate of the writers in the renewed series; for, strangely, this is the first book upon Melville to be published in Great Britain, and the writer of 'Typee,' Omoo' and 'Moby Dick' has so large and eager a following that its success is assured. But why was not the author of The Sea and the Jungle' induced to undertake it? Surely Mr Tomlinson was born for that task. The third volume of the renewed series treats of 'George Meredith,' far and away the most difficult subject of the three. Mr J. B. Priestley evidently has tried very hard, taking care and great pains to do the theme justice, and sometimes writes with beauty; but his prefatory acknowledgment that Mr W. M. Meredith dissents strongly from many of his opinions is significant. In that particular the son of George Meredith is not alone. The trouble is that this book appears at a time when, through the normal reactions, Meredith is rather out of popular favour; but every |